Free. With one catch.
SKEIN is free for you, for your team and for any organization of up to 99 people. Non-profits never pay, whatever their size. AI agents are never billed. The catch concerns only for-profit companies of 100 people or more.
Free
You, your team, an organization of up to 99 people
Install SKEIN on your own servers and use it for free, with no time limit.
Non-profits of any size
Non-profit organizations, charities, foundations, schools, universities and hospitals operated on a non-profit basis, government bodies. Except for-profit enterprises with state ownership: they pay on the same terms as everyone else.
Trying it out
Testing, evaluating, running a pilot and writing integrations on a test environment — free for everyone.
The catch: large for-profit companies
A for-profit organization of 100 people or more pays a fixed fee per year — one fee for the organization together with its whole group of companies. Not per seat, not per user, not per month.
| Who | Price |
|---|---|
| You, a team, an organization of up to 99 people | free |
| For-profit organization, 100–249 people | $1,000 a year |
| For-profit organization, 250–999 people | $3,000 a year |
| For-profit organization, 1,000 people or more | $5,000 a year |
| Non-profits, charities, foundations, schools, universities and hospitals operated on a non-profit basis, government bodies — any size (except for-profit enterprises with state ownership: they pay on the same terms as everyone else) | free, always |
| Guests you let into your SKEIN for free | free — only the owner of the instance pays; for the exception, see “Guests don't pay” |
| AI agents | free, always |
Who counts as a person
An organization's size is how many people work for it and for its whole group of companies: staff and individual contractors, full-time and part-time, each counted once. Everyone counts, not just those who work in SKEIN; user accounts and AI agents don't count. If a team of 50 uses SKEIN in a company of 300, the company pays as an organization of 300.
The group is the companies that control you, that you control, or that are under common control with you. Control means more than 50% of the votes or the power to direct management.
One license covers the whole group: all its people and all its SKEIN instances. Any company of the group can buy it.
When payment starts
Payment starts on 1 February 2027, and every organization gets 30 free days. So nobody pays before 3 March 2027. If you start using SKEIN for real work later, the 30 free days count from your first day. If you grow to 100 people, the 30 days count from that day.
Installing and testing don't start this period.
We trust you
We check nothing: no license keys, no telemetry, no audits. You tell us the size of your organization yourself.
What a paying customer gets
- A contract.
- An invoice.
- Support by email.
- Priority fixes for the bugs you report.
- Priority on feature requests. Your requests for new capabilities go to the front of the queue — as long as they are useful to other SKEIN users too. We don't build scenarios that only your organization needs.
And peace of mind: you use SKEIN legally.
Guests don't pay
Guests don't pay. If you let partners or another organization into your SKEIN for free, only the owner of the instance pays — if it is a for-profit organization of 100 people or more. The exception: an instance that runs wholly or mainly for a for-profit organization of 100 people or more, or was set up at its request, counts as that organization's use, and that organization pays. You can't charge for access to your SKEIN, either yourself or through an intermediary.
SKEIN Cloud
SKEIN Cloud, our hosting, is free for individuals and for teams of up to 10 users. SKEIN Cloud needs no separate license: everything you need is included in the price of the cloud.
Need more? We'll set up a dedicated SKEIN instance for you. One thing we can promise about its price: we won't charge per user per month.
Prices may change
Existing customers keep their price until renewal.
How to buy
Write to us: tell us the name of your organization and how many people it has. For details about hosting SKEIN for others, see the licensing FAQ. Want to embed SKEIN in your product? Write to us.